All the Warmth We Were
by Cartographical
Summary: Post 6x17, "In the Belly of the Beast." All the warmth we were is shivering.


Spoilers for 6x17! Castle obviously doesn't belong to me, and neither does this title, which is a phrase from the poem "Cold Morning" by Eamon Grennan.

* * *

"Getting water tortured sucks," Ryan says sagely.

"Dude," Esposito responds.

"It _does_."

"_Getting water tortured_? Who _says _that?"

"I have rights," Ryan says. "Don't worry, Beckett, you have rights now, too." Ryan's never been one to effectively pull off gallows humor, but she appreciates the effort.

Lanie slides back into the room, leaning just beside the door. "They said soon, honey," she says.

Beckett swallows, clears her throat again. "They said soon an hour ago."

"Just a little longer, and then they'll check your lungs once more."

Castle plows into the room at the end of her sentence, clutching a stack of grey, industrial blankets. "Her lungs? What's wrong?"

"They just want to be sure before they release her," Lanie soothes.

"Her lungs are fine, Castle. They won't be if you keep smothering her, though," Esposito says.

Some primally distressed sound vibrates from deep in Castle's throat. Ryan swings a leg out from his perch on the sink and kicks Espo in the shin. Hard, if his affronted look is anything to go by.

"I have blankets," Castle says in the same quiet tone he'd used since he found her. She's come to think of it as his _I love you and I'm sorry and I'll be so much faster next time, not that there will ever, ever be a next time. _(Of course, that's what he said when they'd all finally gotten there and broken the gorgeous quiet of the woods, shot it through with red and blue fractals and the sharp smell of burning rubber and voice after voice bellowing her name, that's what he'd said when he was still bolting toward her, making her flinch from her silent perch in the cool leather seat of the black Armada, startling her from her peace with the waiting, from counting her heartbeats thudding through the shattered silence.)

"I don't think you have enough," Esposito says.

Castle blinks down. "I thought I'd go to the gift shop and find some fleece or microfiber or merino wool. But I got to the sixth floor and figured I'd just check with an orderly and…"

"Thanks," she murmurs, trying to pitch the word low and lilting. It doesn't work – he flinches, as he's flinched every time he's heard the soft rasp of her voice, the broken vibrato of every vowel.

He starts arranging the blankets hesitantly, awkwardly over her lap, fumbling a little as he tries to smooth a corner with one hand and balance the rest of the load on his other arm. The others have settled into the same pall as her – sitting or standing sentinel, none of them offering to help, none of them offering to leave, the silence slipping around them like water.

"Is that okay?" he murmurs when he's carefully arranged the fourth piece of fabric over her legs. It seems almost like industrial wool, close to the heft and stiffness of a fire blanket, the dark grey fibers slightly pulled, years of stories in the near-invisible catches and tangles along the surface.

"It's better." It's not better. She'd thought the ache from the night of that freezer was bad, she'd thought that it would take the cold months and months to leech out of her locked muscles, but something about this night has made the ice set up residence somewhere far deeper.

"I'm not sure how warm those are." He shifts slightly, rocks back on his heels, an inch away from her and somehow still too distant to be hovering. "Do you want me to go down to the gift shop and see what they have?"

"No. Sit," she finally says, gesturing at the chair next to her. (He'd been half speaking in questions since he'd found her, ever since he ended that first broken monologue with a _What the hell _happened _to you? _as he finally reached out and let his fingers brush along the ache in her cheekbone, let the back of his hand trail over the frozen snarls of her hair.)

He hesitates before dropping down, perched on the edge of the chair like he's set to spring up at any moment, his muscles tense and ready for a showdown that, thank fuck, he never got to see. They're all like that – Ryan balanced on the edge of the sink, Espo tilted against the arm of a padded recliner, even Lanie, slanted against the wall near the door, her fingers halfway to a fist like she's ready to hit the next person who walks into the room.

Esposito catches her eyes. She stares back down at the industrial blanket, studying an odd pull near the bottom left corner. Realizes what she's doing. Jerks her gaze back up to Espo, who's still watching her intently.

"That time you told the psychologist to come back later," he says into the silence, then lets it hang there.

"You're doing this now," Beckett says. She searches for some sense of righteous indignation, but she can't quite get to it through the tendrils of ice still twined around her lungs.

"No time like the present," Esposito says, his affect a little too cavalier.

She swallows, feels the vibration of Castle's horrible tension beside her. "You let a guy play amateur psychologist with a sniper rifle one time," she tries gamely.

"Would have cured your PTSD. If there were a cure for PTSD," Esposito responds, not even trying for subtlety anymore.

She tilts her head, feels the combined concern of the four people in the room, the worry that crowds around her, doing more than the blankets to simultaneously warm and suffocate her. Most of it from the man sitting next to her, his index finger now trailing tense, tight circles over the back of her hand. "I know a guy," she finally says.

"You have an appointment first thing tomorrow morning," Castle breathes out in a near-silent rush, tracing the circles faster and faster now around her knuckle.

Ryan is leaning so far off the sink that he's about to fall, trying to make out the suddenly-quiet conversation "He's got it covered," Beckett finally says, angling her chin at Castle.

They silence hovers hesitantly for a beat, but then Lanie claps her hands together, pushes off the wall. "You're right," she says decisively. "He does. Come on."

"The chart on the wall with the muscles," Ryan murmurs halfheartedly, but Lanie's dragging them out of the room in a suddenly flurry and the silence settles comfortably back.

Castle's finger stills. She drags her gaze off the door, finds herself staring back on the blanket. His breath is ragged beside her, an irregular catch of air in his throat that finally has her staring at him.

He's crying. The back of his hand keeps swiping at his upper hip, his wrist rubbing just beneath his eyes, something so plaintively lost in the gesture that it startles her into motion, forces her to reach up and rub a thumb along his jaw.

Her whole body stills at the dampness of his skin, the slick wetness over the warmth of him that makes her heart thud for an irregular, absurd beat. (She'd thought, when she'd answered his question, that he might have been crying, the way his chest caught and he sucked in so many irregular breaths. _Ice water?_ he'd choked out, even though she hadn't said _that, _even though she'd only given him the barest outline. But of course – the chill of her body would have given it immediately away. He'd collapsed into her at her sharp nod, folded around her, a force of heat that couldn't penetrate but that she could taste, and she'd rested her numb ear against his throat and felt the desperate working of his trachea as he fought to get in air. _Breathe,_ she'd said, and she would have laughed at it, at the ridiculousness of that command, of the entire situation, except it hadn't seemed very funny.)

"Let's not do this again," he finally chokes out, his tears not quite quashed, her thumb still frozen to his jawbone.

"I think you said that before," she husks.

"I _really_ mean it."

She swallows. Sucks in a breath of air that feels a little less like drowning. "Since you're clearly so traumatized, you get the one pass on calling Burke."

"I'm glad you find my suffering so endearing," he manages, his words still wobbly, before he gives into her assessing glare. "I texted on the way down here. You weren't entirely with it." (There'd been three ambulances – _three_, like more than one would have made a difference – but she'd insisted on riding in the back of Ryan and Espo's car. She'd sat beside him in the middle of the backseat, his arm tight around her, the sharp, irregular sound of his breathing almost too much, almost pulling her back to the place that she had absolutely no desire to remember, and she'd stared out the front of the window and she'd been so fucking grateful that nobody said a word.)

"Yeah," she murmurs. "Thanks."

"You've been saying that a lot, Beckett," he says, his voice a little more under control, but a thread of grief running through it that she thinks will take far longer to dissipate.

She blinks, looks at him, realizes what he must think. That it's a consolation – bringing her blankets instead of charging in with the cavalry to rescue her, calling her therapist because he couldn't find her before she was brought into that horrible basement. "Just – the little things. You know." Or he doesn't. He's faced down death plenty of times, but she has no desire for this knowledge to be imprinted into him, she has no desire for him feel that deliberate and consistent clutch of pain because of someone standing over him, _forcing _him to feel it.

"Believe me," he says, "I know."

She feels a response welling up in her, something that's almost drowning out the numbness, but there's a sharp rap at the door and a man in a lab coat wielding a stethoscope. "Ms. Beckett," he says, glancing down at her chart. "Five minutes of your time, and then we can talk about setting you free." (They'd pulled off on the side of the highway without a word when she'd told them to stop, they'd let her step out of the car and pace down the shoulder of the road, but Castle had trailed behind her as she walked in darkness and tried not to flinch at the rush and roar of the occasional car. She'd finally turned and stared at him standing there, holding out his coat like an offering. _Thought you might be cold,_ he'd whispered with a self-deprecating smile. She walked back towards him, curling her fingers around the stiff fabric as she murmured, _Felt a lot worse before you got here.)_


End file.
